Good Idea to Take Easy Classes to Boost Gpa Law School

I'm a business major with a 3.75 GPA.

I plan on applying to law school next year, and would therefore like to take a few "easy classes" in the meantime to boost my GPA to give me the best chance to get accepted at the best schools possible.

My question is if schools look negatively at applicants who blatantly take unrelated, easy classes (eg. Basket weaving 101) to boost their GPA. Am I better of just staying with the grades I have now from my classes?

Post by **nuss3** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:56 am

boost the gpa--although at this point, you're probably not going to gain more than a couple hundredths of a point

Post by **A'nold** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:05 am

Take all the easiest classes and treat them like the hardest classes you've ever taken, get 4.0's for the rest of your time there, and reap the rewards.

Post by **09042014** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:06 am

A'nold wrote:Take all the easiest classes and treat them like the hardest classes you've ever taken, get 4.0's for the rest of your time there, and reap the rewards.

+1. Bumping a 3.75 to 3.85 is huge for law school admissions.

Post by **CCN** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:17 am

Uh. you're a business major. you've taken nothing but easy classes probably.

Post by **$1.99** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:23 am

maybe i should make a screenname called "HYS" and tell CCN to shut the hell up

Post by **Knock** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:19 am

Desert Fox wrote:

A'nold wrote:Take all the easiest classes and treat them like the hardest classes you've ever taken, get 4.0's for the rest of your time there, and reap the rewards.

+1. Bumping a 3.75 to 3.85 is huge for law school admissions.

Why's that? just because a 3.85 is at or above median for every school but HYS?

Just curious because i'm slightly below that, but I have a strong chance at ending up right about there by the time I apply.

Post by **09042014** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:29 am

Knockglock wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

A'nold wrote:Take all the easiest classes and treat them like the hardest classes you've ever taken, get 4.0's for the rest of your time there, and reap the rewards.

+1. Bumping a 3.75 to 3.85 is huge for law school admissions.

Why's that? just because a 3.85 is at or above median for every school but HYS?

Just curious because i'm slightly below that, but I have a strong chance at ending up right about there by the time I apply.

Exactly why.

Post by **flyingpanda** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:35 am

Desert Fox wrote:

Knockglock wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

A'nold wrote:Take all the easiest classes and treat them like the hardest classes you've ever taken, get 4.0's for the rest of your time there, and reap the rewards.

+1. Bumping a 3.75 to 3.85 is huge for law school admissions.

Why's that? just because a 3.85 is at or above median for every school but HYS?

Just curious because i'm slightly below that, but I have a strong chance at ending up right about there by the time I apply.

Exactly why.

3.85 is also the minimum to get into UVA without a 170 LSAT.

Post by **CCN** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:37 am

$1.99 wrote:maybe i should make a screenname called "HYS" and tell CCN to shut the hell up

you're so cool

Post by **$1.99** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:35 pm

and you are so cool for not being able to break the CCN tier

Post by **sumus romani** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:39 pm

If you are dead-set on law and can find no class that satisfies your intellectual curiosity or could further your LSAT prep, then by all means take those easy classes for the win. What's the problem here?

Post by **jks289** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:42 pm

By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

Post by **KibblesAndVick** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:45 pm

jks289 wrote:By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

+1 This is spot on. The goal is not to take easy classes. The goal is to get A's in all your classes. Taking what looks like "easy" classes usually does the trick but make sure you look into it fully.

Don't think twice about padding your GPA. I'd do some crazy shit to go from a 3.75 to a 3.85. In fact, instead of graduating a year early I'm highly considering forgoing ~30 thousand dollars in income, paying several thousand more on useless credits I don't need, and adding 10 more A's to my transcript... What scares me most about this plan is that it's probably the rational response to the situation I currently find myself in.

I highly regret not caring about my GPA freshman year of college... grrrr... Don't let this happen to you, pad your GPA.

Post by **SaintClarence27** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:51 pm

KibblesAndVick wrote:

jks289 wrote:By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

+1 This is spot on. The goal is not to take easy classes. The goal is to get A's in all your classes. Taking what looks like "easy" classes usually does the trick but make sure you look into it fully.

Don't think twice about padding your GPA. I'd do some crazy shit to go from a 3.75 to a 3.85. In fact, instead of graduating a year early I'm highly considering forgoing ~30 thousand dollars in income, paying several thousand more on useless credits I don't need, and adding 10 more A's to my transcript... What scares me most about this plan is that it's probably the rational response to the situation I currently find myself in.

I highly regret not caring about my GPA freshman year of college... grrrr... Don't let this happen to you, pad your GPA.

It's not just about getting in, either. If you exceed a school's medians, you will get money. I would guess that if I upped my GPA by .1 or so, I would have easily gotten another 10K/year from Illinois, for instance. Also, start working on the LSAT problem solving, and make sure to get your LORs in order. Because it can help so much to apply early in the cycle, the sooner you get going on that stuff, the better. You can take the LSAT whenever you want - even if you're waiting a couple of years before you apply.

Post by **lt0826** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:45 pm

jks289 wrote:By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

+1 my "easy" science class in organic gardening was one of the hardest classes I ever took. Also had no idea how hard astronomy would be. I thought i was taking the "easy" science classes - I was so wrong.

Post by **$1.99** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:13 pm

lt0826 wrote:

jks289 wrote:By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

+1 my "easy" science class in organic gardening was one of the hardest classes I ever took. Also had no idea how hard astronomy would be. I thought i was taking the "easy" science classes - I was so wrong.

LOL +1, i had to work harder in intro to astronomy than in my math and economics classes

Post by **eth3n** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:25 pm

Any UG major other than History = doing it wrong. UG difficulty is rarely taken into consideration (i.e. you will NEVER regret that history 4.0 with easy ass classes, [strike]even if applying YHS[/strike]). If anything easy major would help for top law schools cause they give you more time in schedule for the EC crap you are expected to do even if you have the EE major or whatever.

Post by **eachdaythewiser** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:43 pm

Although it seems the tense of many forums to completely ignore what the admissions deans at T5 say, I'd like to point out that JR at H says he likes to see courses that are not questionable or likes to see majors that look like they might ad diversity to the school. Just pointing this out. It PROBABLY counts (what he says) when you're waitlisted or being compared to others with similar scores. It TRUELY doesn't matter when you have the 75 percentile of the school you're shooting for, or maybe 50 percentile and URM status or even Hispanic-other status.

Post by **eth3n** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:43 pm

eachdaythewiser wrote:Although it seems the tense of many forums to completely ignore what the admissions deans at T5 say, I'd like to point out that JR at H says he likes to see courses that are not questionable or likes to see majors that look like they might ad diversity to the school. Just pointing this out. It PROBABLY counts (what he says) when you're waitlisted or being compared to others with similar scores. It TRUELY doesn't matter when you have the 75 percentile of the school you're shooting for, or maybe 50 percentile and URM status or even Hispanic-other status.

Conceding that this is the case, you still have to ask yourself (ok we all know that yale has the ridiculous 3-round policy for accepting apps etc.) for the vast majority of the population whether or not it is worth the risk to take a hard (read:force curved) major in the hope that the difficulty/diversity it will add to the law school will be worth the potentially lower gpa and less time able to be spent on other endeavors. I am sure there is a situation where someone with a weak major (even with a 4.0) is rejected in favor of someone with a more difficulty major, but I would think that the vast vast majority of the time it is better to take the safe bet (although to be fair the objectivity of grading in some of the sciences might be welcome after the rampant B+'s and A-'s awarded in many humanities majors simply because the TA doesn't feel like reading the papers.)

Nice first post btw.

Post by **JordynAsh** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:48 pm

lt0826 wrote:

jks289 wrote:By all means, take the easy classes. But be careful in picking. Sometimes things that seem like they might be easy end up being really brutal to get A's in either because they are so boring, or curved, or just not one of your strengths.

+1 my "easy" science class in organic gardening was one of the hardest classes I ever took. Also had no idea how hard astronomy would be. I thought i was taking the "easy" science classes - I was so wrong.

+1 My prof was a bit spacey (pardon the pun) and would tell stories about his kids during class then load tests with what my liberal arts degree self would call "crazy ass" physics.

Post by **PunjabiLower** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 5:42 am

No. It looks really shady. I am probably the KING OF FLUFFING GPA....and I got rejected from safety to target schools. They differentiate between your classes. Just do well on the LSAT.

Post by **SaintClarence27** » Thu May 06, 2010 3:36 pm

PunjabiLower wrote:No. It looks really shady. I am probably the KING OF FLUFFING GPA....and I got rejected from safety to target schools. They differentiate between your classes. Just do well on the LSAT.

What was your LSAT/GPA and who rejected you? I question that it might have been something else in your application...

Post by **im_blue** » Thu May 06, 2010 4:07 pm

SaintClarence27 wrote:

PunjabiLower wrote:No. It looks really shady. I am probably the KING OF FLUFFING GPA....and I got rejected from safety to target schools. They differentiate between your classes. Just do well on the LSAT.

What was your LSAT/GPA and who rejected you? I question that it might have been something else in your application...

He's also 19 years old, had a low LSAT and possibly mediocre LORs as well.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 2&t=116654

Post by **romothesavior** » Thu May 06, 2010 4:12 pm

PunjabiLower wrote:No. It looks really shady. I am probably the KING OF FLUFFING GPA....and I got rejected from safety to target schools. They differentiate between your classes. Just do well on the LSAT.

I'm growing tired of you bitching about getting rejected from schools where you were below (often substantially below) the median. Cornell, Georgetown, UVA, etc. are not interested in your 162 LSAT. It ain't because you fluffed your GPA.

Ya know what? I got WL'd at GULC and Michigan, and rejected from Duke. But I'm not bitching about it. Why? BECAUSE MY LSAT WAS BELOW THE MEDIAN!

To OP: Just take classes you find interesting and think you can do well in. Many students take easier, non-major classes their senior year (I took ballroom dancing and sci-fi fiction, for example). I don't think this will stick out like a sore thumb because many students are doing it. In all likelihood, you are done with your major requirements and are just looking to pass the time, which is totally normal.

May Youne1981

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